posted at 8:41 am on June 20, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

A few days ago, the Free Beacon published an old interview with Hillary Clinton from the 1980s, in which she described pro bono work she did as a court-appointed attorney for man accused of raping a twelve-year-old girl. Clinton described how she attacked the prosecution’s handling of key evidence and won a light sentence on reduced charges for a man she knew was guilty — which is what defense attorneys do. However, her laughter and clear delight in retelling this story provided a discordant note to Hillary’s claim to be a defender of women, and some questioned whether Hillary employed an “attack the victim” defense that would make that claim even more hypocritical.

The Daily Beast’s Josh Rogoin took a break from his national-security beat and tracked down the victim in that crime, now 52, who alleges that Hillary Clinton did attack her as part of the defense, and much more. In the exclusive interview, Rogin reports the woman’s accusation that Hillary Clinton lied in court documents to portray her as a sex-crazed spoiled brat who threw herself at older men and then accused them of rape:

The victim’s allegation that Clinton smeared her following her rape is based on a May 1975 court affidavit written by Clinton on behalf of Thomas Alfred Taylor, one of the two alleged attackers, whom Clinton was appointed to defend.

“I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and engage in fantasizing,” Clinton, then named Hillary D. Rodham, wrote in the affidavit. “I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body. Also that she exhibits an unusual stubbornness and temper when she does not get her way.”

Clinton also wrote that a child psychologist told her that children in early adolescence “tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences,” especially when they come from “disorganized families, such as the complainant.”

The victim vigorously denied Clinton’s accusations and said there has never been any explanation of what Clinton was referring to in that affidavit. She claims she never accused anyone of attacking her before her rape.

“I’ve never said that about anyone. I don’t know why she said that. I have never made false allegations. I know she was lying,” she said. “I definitely didn’t see older men. I don’t know why Hillary put that in there and it makes me plumb mad.”

It’s not the first time this case and Clinton’s conduct in it has come up in her political career. Glenn Thrush wrote about it in 2008 for Newsday, although it got lost in the shuffle of the campaign. At the time, the victim hadn’t seen the court documents or heard Clinton’s interview, and told Thrush, “I’m sure Hillary was just doing her job.” Hillary’s team told Thrush that “she had an ethical and legal obligation to defend him to the fullest extent of the law.”

That’s certainly true, and also why courts appoint lawyers to represent indigent clients. Everyone deserves a full and competent defense. However, that does not include making false representations to the court as statements of fact. “I have been informed” does not suffice as a dodge of that responsibility, either. Hillary would certainly have had the resources to research whether the victim had ever accused anyone of rape in the past before making that claim to the court. And it’s beyond bizarre how Clinton even conceived of an argument that a rape victim of twelve might just be “romanticizing sexual experiences.”

Attorneys represent clients, and it’s dangerous to attack lawyers for clients of their choosing, or in this case not of their own choosing. But how they represent them matters — especially for a lawyer seeking the Presidency as the next banner-carrier in the War On Women.

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“I am informed and believe” is standard legal jargon. All that is required is a good faith belief. Perhaps she was informed by her client. Defense attorney’s (especially public defenders) usually don’t have the resources to check out information like that.

Uh oh. A Clinton victim is speaking out. Which “journalist” will be first to assassinate this woman …uh …her character… for 15 minutes of fame, some choice time on MSNBC, and a shot at an exclusive Clinton interview? Come on, investigative jouralists! You know you want to! Hopefully, it will be someone from Slate or Vox so Noah gets a chance to read it.

It’s not the first time this case and Clinton’s conduct in it has come up in her political career. Glenn Thrush wrote about it in 2008 for Newsday, although it got lost in the shuffle of the campaign.

If it came up in the 2008 campaign, and it came up at a very liberal outlet like Newsweek, odds are pretty good it wasn’t Republicans who led Thrush to the story. And the same is true here — Rogin’s not a doctrinaire liberal, but The Daily Beast definitely is not the Daily Caller, though reading the first few comments to the piece at their website, the Hillary defenders want to paint it, the author and anyone sympathetic to the victim as part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Hillary’s laughter following this rape case is just another demonstration of her ruthlessness, truth be d*amned. Her callous responses remind me of her joy in the death of Qadaffi: “We came, we saw, he died.”

Is it behavior like this that caused Shrillary to ‘give up’ her license to practice ‘law’?

vnvet on June 20, 2014 at 9:02 AM

No, don’t think so…but it’s one of the reasons why they kicked her off the congressional committee investigating Nixon because she was just too nasty.
She gave up her law license cause she wasn’t keeping up and practicing law…just like obozo and moochelle.

Uh oh. A Clinton victim is speaking out. Which “journalist” will be first to assassinate this woman …uh …her character… for 15 minutes of fame, some choice time on MSNBC, and a shot at an exclusive Clinton interview? Come on, investigative jouralists! You know you want to! Hopefully, it will be someone from Slate or Vox so Noah gets a chance to read it.

They can smear this woman all they want, it won’t change the audio of Shrillary laughing about it though. That’s the kicker.

Flange on June 20, 2014 at 9:00 AM

Yup. Her actions were a lawyer being a lawyer, but her snark is what is going to kill her. Not that this type of conversation doesn’t go on all the time, but I hark back to the first rule of life: Do NOT record anything!

Uh oh. A Clinton victim is speaking out. Which “journalist” will be first to assassinate this woman …uh …her character… for 15 minutes of fame, some choice time on MSNBC, and a shot at an exclusive Clinton interview? Come on, investigative jouralists! You know you want to! Hopefully, it will be someone from Slate or Vox so Noah gets a chance to read it.

ROCnPhilly on June 20, 2014 at 8:55 AM

There have been numerous Clinton critics who later died in “accidents”, and then there was also the impossible and ludicrous physical evidence in the Fort Marcy Park case.

Is it behavior like this that caused Shrillary to ‘give up’ her license to practice ‘law’?

vnvet on June 20, 2014 at 9:02 AM

It’s true that defense attorneys have an ethical obligation to zealously defend their criminal clients, even when the clients are charged with heinous crimes, but that doesn’t excuse what Hillary did here. Attorneys also have an ethical obligation to keep their clients’ confidences. In this interview, Hillary reveals that she believes that her client was guilty of the child rape and that he lied on a polygraph exam — two things she had no business saying in public. Unless she had a waiver from her client giving her permission to violate the attorney-client privilege and cast him in a bad light (and why would he ever have agreed to that?), then she violated numerous ethical rules by giving this interview.

We know Hillary was fired from the Watergate committee for unethical behavior, and we also know that she failed the D.C. bar exam. Perhaps it was the ethics questions that tripped her up.

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

I remember the ’80s when video cameras were starting to be relatively common and a string of kids getting busted for taping themselves playing mailbox baseball and similar stuff. I always wondered what was dumber, the vandalism itself or the taping of it. I think this is where the phrase “doubling down on stupid” was born.

I am an attorney. I am also no fan whatsoever of Mrs. Clinton. However, I also use the phrase in legal pleadings, “I have been informed…”. What I use that phrase for is to put potential facts into play. Ordinarily, the information that follows is either from my client or from an investigator. Why not just say so then, you ask. Because if you directly cite such a sensitive source you open the door allowing the opposing attorney to examine that source, that is, your client. In effect disclosing the source, you breach the attorney/client privilege, which you may not do. Since the source (such as the discoveries of an investigator or written documents) is an attorney’s work product, that too is protected by the privilege.
Do some attorneys abuse this privilege? My experience is some do. Did Mrs. Clinton do so in this matter? Without a close review of the court’s file in the case, one can’t with certainty know right now either way.

Hillary assured me that she had not drafted, and would not advocate, any such rules changes. However, as documented in my personal diary, I soon learned that she had lied. She had already drafted changes, and continued to advocate them. In one written legal memorandum, she advocated denying President Nixon
representation by counsel. In so doing she simply ignored the fact that in the committee’s then most recent prior impeachment proceeding, the committee had afforded the right to counsel to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

I had also informed Hillary that the Douglas impeachment files were available for public inspection in the committee offices. She later removed the Douglas files without my permission and carried them to the offices of the impeachment inquiry staff — where they were no longer accessible to the public.

Like The current POTUS, HRC has issues with rules and trouble with honesty. All Leftists are liars.

The mighty Clintons are poised for a return to the White House. Nothing anyone can reveal about them is likely to keep a democrat from voting for her/them. Not this, not Benghazi, not their questionable financial dealings, nothing. Why? Because they want to elect another democrat and they don’t care what it takes to get that done. Fortunately, because their president has been a complete disaster, the democrats may not get their wish this time around. And they’ve got no one else to run.

Hillary’s lack of ethical legal behavior is well-documented. She was even fired from the Watergate Commission for it.

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

PJ Emeritus on June 20, 2014 at 9:25 AM

The irony of her ruthlessness in pursuing Nixon is the similarities between the two:

Both maintained enemeies lists and believed in getting even
Both misused government agencies and information
Both saw the media as hostile to them
Both surrounded themselves with sycophants who would put loyalty above anything else.
Both saw winning as what was the most important; however it was done. (Thus Nixon’s famous take on Watergate that the worst thing about it was not that it was wrong but that it was a blunder.)

Her tactic of not really spelling out specific plans in her campaigns but instead villifying her opponents with smears (the Bush 41 infidelity rumors and claims in 1996 that if the GOP won, the black churches would get burned down for example) is not reassuring that she would be an agent of reconciliation and positive change for the general welfare.

Hillary would certainly have had the resources to research whether the victim had ever accused anyone of rape in the past before making that claim to the court.

Of course. Of more interest to me, though, is why the prosecution let those unsubstantiated insinuations stand, as the prosecutor could easily have thrown the ball back to her side of the court by demanding substantiation or withdrawal of the filing.

Am I missing something and the prosecution did do so, or as it appears the prosecutor sine nothing was mentioned about it, did he do nothing but make a deal with Clinton. If the latter, I’d be interested in investigating why the prosecutor (who was it, anyway) did not pursue the case of the rape of a 12 year-old more stubbornly.

My impression of the Clinton tape is that her cackling isn’t so much at her novel, innovative, and successful defense of her client but her first every wielding of the power of connections and name recognition via her future husband. While she was not yet married to Bill at the time of the case, she was engaged to marry him Later that year. Bill had already made a name for himself in politics and a year later was the shoo-in elected Attorney General of Arkansas.

I have little doubt, the real reason Hillary was so able to “win” that case, was because she either bribed the prosecutor or threatened to have his career ruined unless he backed off.

Addendum: It’s worth noting that the Free Beacon has been banned from the University of Arkansas library archives after making the audio of the interview public. That decision, Alana Goodman reports, was made by a donor to … Hillary Clinton.

I followed the link to see what justification they had. Essentially, they’re objecting to publishing anything from their archives based on intellectual property rights.

In a library.

I have to laugh at things like this, but some people just don’t seem to get the joke.

Ya know, I had a buddy quite some years ago that mostly told lies, even when the truth would sound better. Just a habit I guess. We knew he was lying and he knew we knew he was lying. I guess he figured we expected him to lie so he did. Sometimes amusing, sometimes not. Reminds me of hillary. Seems she has lied, cheated her whole life. She thinks we expect it of her so she just keeps lying. Somebody needs to make a list of lies, from this story to her time in WH, to Bosnia, to Benghazi, etc., etc. As an added thought, was she actually like she portrayed this girl? At 12 years old she pursued older men and then accused them of rape? Kinda sounds like her MO!

That’s certainly true, and also why courts appoint lawyers to represent indigent clients. Everyone deserves a full and competent defense. However, that does not include making false representations to the court as statements of fact. ”I have been informed” does not suffice as a dodge of that responsibility, either. Hillary would certainly have had the resources to research whether the victim had ever accused anyone of rape in the past before making that claim to the court. And it’s beyond bizarre how Clinton even conceived of an argument that a rape victim of twelve might just be “romanticizing sexual experiences.”

AND you don’t go blathering on about the victim to a REPORTER years after the fact no matter how true or not it may be. I wonder how much of a bone the victim might have to pick legally about all this.

But this is who the liberals idolize. Her and her predator husband. All that really needs to be remembered.

AND you don’t go blathering on about the victim to a REPORTER years after the fact no matter how true or not it may be. I wonder how much of a bone the victim might have to pick legally about all this.

But this is who the liberals idolize. Her and her predator husband. All that really needs to be remembered.

kim roy on June 20, 2014 at 12:59 PM

If the criminal she (mostly) got off is still alive, he would actually have a good malpractice case for violation of attorney-client privilege.
That would be HILARIOUS if he actually filed a suit!!!

Ya know, I had a buddy quite some years ago that mostly told lies, even when the truth would sound better. Just a habit I guess. We knew he was lying and he knew we knew he was lying. I guess he figured we expected him to lie so he did. Sometimes amusing, sometimes not. Reminds me of hillary. Seems she has lied, cheated her whole life. She thinks we expect it of her so she just keeps lying. Somebody needs to make a list of lies, from this story to her time in WH, to Bosnia, to Benghazi, etc., etc. As an added thought, was she actually like she portrayed this girl? At 12 years old she pursued older men and then accused them of rape? Kinda sounds like her MO!

boogieboy on June 20, 2014 at 12:05 PM

Really good liars have to lie about everything in order to get good at lying, and so that no one can distinguish a tell. They will like about what they had for dinner last night, for no other reason than that’s just the way there are. This is what the Clintons are.

Hillary’s laughter following this rape case is just another demonstration of her ruthlessness, truth be d*amned. Her callous responses remind me of her joy in the death of Qadaffi: “We came, we saw, he died.”

onlineanalyst on June 20, 2014 at 9:01 AM

Was she already married to a rapist at the time? Maybe a pattern is emerging of an affinity with sexual violence?

As for her compulsive lying, like her reckless partner, Bill, she must get a thrill from almost being found out.